AM radio stations whose listeners often tune in when driving in a motor vehicle are set to be switched off by some of the biggest car and truck manufacturers in the world.
AM radio is seen by some automotive brands as a fading if not dead technology especially among younger Australians.
Brands such as BMW, Tesla, Mazda, Volkswagen along with the likes of Volvo and Ford, with their Mustangs, recently moved to remove AM radio access from vehicles, especially electric vehicles claiming electromagnetic interference with the frequencies used by radio stations to deliver AM services.
In Australia radio groups such as Nova are investing heavily in delivering their services to digital platforms, a move that is attracting younger audiences.
Bloomberg recently reported that AM radio is particularly susceptible to disruption because it uses frequencies like those emitted by EV systems, which can overwhelm the radio signal and make it unintelligible.
FM stations operate over different wavelengths.
Shielding radio reception gear can be costly and complex, especially when vehicle users can access AM signals via digital platforms.
The move is set to cause problems in Australia as emergency services use AM in the event of a bushfire or flood emergency.
“When the power goes out and cell networks are down, the car radio is often the only way for people to get information, sometimes for days at a time,” claims one radio executive during a recent US House hearing on the subject of removing AM access capability from motor vehicles.
In the USA, the Ford Motor originally planned to drop AM from their F-150 vehicles and the Mustang, saying AM listeners accounted for less than 5% of radio usage in its vehicles.
But the company changed course last month and is now set to keep AM for the time being after speaking with policy leaders about the importance of AM broadcast radio as a part of the emergency alert system.” He didn’t say what might happen after 2024.
Gary Shapiro, chief executive officer of the Consumer Technology Association that includes carmakers as members, scoffed at the public-safety rationale.
The collapse of alternative warning systems including mobile phones, FM radio and satellite radio is “possible but extraordinarily unlikely,” Shapiro said.
Electric vehicles are a growing portion of the Australian market and accounted for about 6.7% of new vehicle sales in the first quarter, claim analysts.
Deliveries of fully electric vehicles (EVs) in Australia came in at 17,396 units during the first quarter of 2023, up a substantial 157.6 per cent year-on-year.
Overall EV market share in quarter one of 2023 sat at 6.5 per cent, compared to just 2.6 per cent this time last year .
A mandate requiring AM broadcast reception is “just one more thing hindering the introduction of electric cars,” Shapiro said in an interview.
